March 12, 2024: NeMLA Reflections: NeMLA Reads Together

[This pastweekend I attended the one scholarly conference I never miss: the Northeast MLA. It was agreat time as it always is, so as usual here’s a seriesof reflections on some of the great work I heard, saw, and shared there! Leadingup to a few more reflections on NeMLA as an organization!]

On twotakeaways from the latest example of a wonderful communal endeavor.

Almostexactly four years ago, I wrote a NeMLAreflection post highlighting the first iteration of the organization’s then-newestconference idea, NeMLA Reads Together (which that year featured Andre Dubus IIIand his book Gone So Long). Before Isay a couple things about this year’s Read and author, I’d ask you to check outthat post if you would and then come on back.

Welcomeback! This year’s NeMLA Reads Together book was Landof Love and Drowning (2014), the debut novel from our keynoteaddress speaker Tiphanie Yanique. Landof Love and Drowning is a wonderful example of one of my very favoritegenres: a multigenerationalfamily novel, spanning decadesin the lives of (in this case) a family on St. Thomas in the U.S. VirginIslands. Many of the novels I’ve read in that genre could be described associal realism, but while Yanique’s certainly includes those layers, it alsofeatures more supernatural elements in a prominent and particularly powerfulrole (putting in conversation with another great multigenerational CaribbeanAmerican novel from a now frustratinglyfraught author, Junot Díaz’s TheBrief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao [2008]). I’ll have to think more about howI’d analyze those supernatural elements, and look forward to the chance to doso while teaching Yanique’s novel at some point; but I know they addedsomething striking and meaningful to her work in this familiar literary genre.

The most importantbenefit of the NeMLA Reads Together initiative is not just the chance to have andread this shared text ahead of the conference, wonderful as that opportunityis. It’s also and especially the opportunity to follow up that collective readingby hearing from the author at the conference, in this special keynote address.As illustrated by countless interviews like thisone on Land of Love and Drowningwith Noreen Tomassi of Brooklyn’s Center for Fiction, Yanique is a thoughtfuland compelling voice far beyond her fiction, one who can connect her formal,stylistic, and genre choices to thematic questions of place and community,culture and heritage, the history of the Virgin Islands and the Caribbean, spirituality,and more. To hear directly from such a voice offers distinct yet complementarypleasures and inspirations to reading their work, and I came away from Yanique’stalk as moved and inspired as I’ve been from every NeMLA Reads Together authorand work alike.

Nextreflection tomorrow,

Ben

PS. If youwere at NeMLA, what would you share? If not or in any case, other organizationsyou’d highlight?